Super
Mario Brothers 3 (SMB3) was a game I anticipated like no other game
before or since.Featured
in The Wizard (with a young Fred Savage), SMB3 got my gaming lust
pumping.Upon booting up
– take a deep breath! – Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Brothers
3 some of that old gaming lust started pumping again.If you played the original SMB3 not much has changed aside from
updates to the presentation – it’s still one of the best games of
all time.

You
play as Mario (or Luigi in two-player mode) attempting to set things
right after Bowser and his offspring wreak some havoc across seven
kingdoms.They’ve changed
the king of each kingdom into an animal and it falls to Mario to set
things right – ostensibly by jumping.A lot.Then, in a
plot-twist that you would never expect, things get personal when Bowser
kidnaps Princess Peach!In
short, it’s classic Mario.

But
if you never played SMB3 when it was first released this will all be
new.What you’ll find is
a particularly engrossing game, packed with power-ups, a few mini-games,
and some truly devious levels.The
variety is huge!Levels
move left, right, up, and down – and on occasion you’ll go behind
the scenery to discover hidden secrets.Some levels are straightforward affairs – avoid the koopas,
collect some coins, etc. – but others are so complex you can’t fully
explore them unless you have the right power-up for the level.

Mario
can be equipped with a variety of power-ups.The standard growth mushroom and fire flower are present but you
also have access to a raccoon suit, a teddy bear suit, a frog suit –
an actual frog suit – and, maybe the coolest one, a hammer
brothers suit, which allows you to fling hammers and cover yourself in a
hard shell.You can also
commandeer a big wind-up boot to leap around in.Each of the power-ups has a its own use, but the raccoon and
teddy bear suits have a neat feature that can only be exploited if you
can build up some speed.Acquire
take-off speed and you can take to the air in a burst of flight to reach
previously unreachable areas.

For
the most part, levels are approached in a linear fashion although you do
have some leeway in choosing which stages of every level you want to
tackle thanks to the overhead map.Not every stage has to be completed to progress, but sometimes
it’s the only way to get the coolest stuff.

Scattered
around each overhead map are mushroom houses, which contain power-ups
that can be stored until you need them.There are also hammer brothers to take out, extra men bonus
games, and a memory game that pops up on occasion.

The
usual Mario environments are present and accounted for: ice, fire,
water, desert and dungeon.SMB3
throws a few curve balls in the form of floating battleships, which can
have you tearing out your hair if you don’t know exactly what you’re
doing.And some of the
castles are can be mind-boggling, with lots trial and error and you try
to sort out what to do. (Even those that completely mastered SMB3 when
it was originally released will find some challenge.)

As
solid as the single-player experience is, Nintendo packed SMB3 with all
sorts of extras, including e-reader bonuses and multiplayer gaming with
the original Mario Brothers.